Gina’s quit her charity role, so will Matt leave political jungle?
GINA Coladangelo, Matt hancock’s girlfriend, has just stepped into the spotlight in Australia.
She will be on hand to greet him whenever he is evicted from I’m A Celebrity — joining Zara Phillips and Chris Moyles’s partner Tiffany Austin at the Marriott hotel in Surfers Paradise, on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
however it can be revealed that Coladangelo, 45, didn’t need to take leave from work to be there, because she has quit her job in marketing and communications for a charity, after spending less than two months in the role.
Records at Companies house show that she joined UK Youth as a director on September 22 and quit on November 2, shortly after hancock’s controversial TV appearance was announced.
The news is sure to lead to speculation that the couple are planning a media career outside of politics, and that hancock may leave his role as an MP.
Some suggest they are hoping to launch themselves as a high-profile media pair and pick up work in television
and radio. The disgraced former health Secretary is being paid a reported £400,000 to appear in I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of here, dwarfing his £ 84,000 a year salary from Westminster.
he resigned from his ministerial post in June last year after he was caught breaching social distancing rules by kissing Coladangelo, an old friend from university, in his ministerial office.
At the time, she was employed as the communications director for Oliver Bonas, the firm founded by her husband, but also working part-time with hancock at the Department of health. She left both jobs after news of the affair emerged.
The daughter of a millionaire businessman, she had a successful career in PR and lobbying after completing a degree in PPe (philosophy, politics and economics) at Oxford University.
The affair ended hancock’s 15-year marriage to wife Martha. They have three children. he said in the jungle: ‘It was really tough. I messed up, and I ’fessed up. I resigned and it’s no excuse, but I fell in love, right? That also had a lot of other consequences, obviously.’
his fellow campmate Babatunde Aleshe, 34, replied: ‘You didn’t just “fall in love”. You were grabbing booty, bruv!’
hancock added that the best thing about being kicked out would be ‘seeing her on the bridge’.
The charity declined to say why Coladangelo left, or whose decision it was for her to leave the unpaid post.
Critics are furious that hancock has turned his back on his work just as an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic by the Government gets underway. he has been stripped of the government whip as a result.